Photos: Aston Martin AM-RB 001 is More Spaceship than Hypercar

It may have four wheels, but Aston Martin’s new AM-RB 001 hypercar looks more like a spaceship than a car. And no, it’s not a concept—this is actually what the production model will look like, give or take a few minor changes. We’ll give you a moment to pick your jaw up from the floor.

The car was built as a joint project between Aston Martin and Red Bull Racing (hence the name) and was designed by none other than Adrian Newey, chief technical officer at Red Bull and arguably the most successful Formula 1 designer in the history of the sport. Newey says he has dreamed of designing a road car ever since he was six.

So what better way to finally realize his dream than by designing a car whose track version, according to the man himself, will be as fast as an LMP1-class Le Mans endurance racecar? If you’re not sure how fast that is, it’s just about quicker than anything out there other than Formula 1 cars, and faster than the Porsche 918 and McLaren P1 around a track like Silverstone by a whopping 20 seconds, which might as well be an eternity in the automotive world.

In other words, it’s not just fast: it’s a spaceship that will likely to try to rip off its tires and fly off into the distance.

The road-legal version will be slower than the track-oriented car of course, but Newey maintains that the two will be “closely related.” The design is simply wonderful and mind-boggling, with huge emphasis on generating downforce through diffusers and radical underfloor aerodynamics.

It’ll have a naturally-aspirated V12 mounted behind the teardrop-shaped passenger compartment with power directed to the rear wheels only. The goal is to achieve a 1:1 power-to-weight ratio (one brake horsepower per kilo of weight), and though Newey thinks a dual-clutch gearbox won’t cut it because of weight and bulkiness, he claims to have several solutions in mind that he can’t share just yet.

Aston Martin says that between 99 and 150 road cars and 25 track-only versions will be built with deliveries starting in 2018. That’s not a lot, but at $3 million, we doubt many would be able to afford it anyway.